Obituary

Roy Neal, NBC News correspondent for 38 years until his retirement in 1986, died Aug. 15 in High Point, N.C., from complications following heart surgery. He was 82.

Neal made a name for himself as a top-notch science reporter with a focus on NASA and the space program. He reported on every manned space flight from Alan Shepard's 1961 voyage through the first few shuttle missions. On the night of Apollo 13 crisis, Neal was the pool reporter chosen to go into NASA's mission-control room.

A ham-radio enthusiast, Neal in the early 1980s encouraged NASA to install ham radios on space shuttles so crew members could talk with their families, according to Greensboro, N.C.'s News & Record. The program became known as the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, and Neal served as its chairman.

Born in Philadelphia, Neal, an Infantry lieutenant in the U.S. Army, got his start as a program manager for the Armed Forces Radio Network in occupied Germany during WWII. When he returned to Philadelphia, he first worked in radio before joining NBC in 1948. Four years later, he moved to Southern California to set up the network's West Coast bureau.

He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Pat, and two sons, Mark and David, the latter of whom is executive producer of NBC Olympics.